I’m a big fan of Hulu, love my AppleTV and often rent from the iTunes store. I’ve got a Netflix account whose Watch Instantly queue is filled with old movies and television shows (currently working my way through Quantum Leap). And, yes, I run Boxee on my MacBook, MacBook Pro and on my AppleTV.

Over the past few months, I’ve considered cutting my satellite provider and going with online content and basic cable from the local cable company. I’ve not made the leap, yet.

Now I’ve got another obstacle, which is news that content providers have forced Hulu to require that Boxee drop their service. You can read blog posts about it from both Boxee and Hulu. (If you are a fan of Hulu on Boxee, please comment on both blogs.)

That aside, the idea of cutting the cord and saving the money is still appealing. For a while I was using a MacMini and EyeTV as a media hub to capture news reports for a client. Using a modified set-up would give me most of what I want.

On that note, here’s a great blog post from J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly. He details how he cut his cable bill in half and still gets his favorite shows.

I’ve had several requests lately to update my two-year quest to find cheap alternatives to cable television. In March of 2007, Kris and I were paying $65.82 for a deluxe digital cable package that we rarely used. “$65.82 a month isn’t a fortune,” I wrote at the time, “but it’s a lot of money to pay for something that doesn’t get used. If we were big TV watchers maybe the cost could be justified. But we aren’t. And it can’t.”

To save money, we cut our cable to just the basic channels, which reduced our bill to $11.30/month. We also began to use the iTunes Music Store to subscribe to the shows that we wanted to watch. And over the past year, I’ve become a fan of Hulu, an online service that allows users to watch many past and current shows for free.

He goes on to detail how he did it. It’s worth the read.

For my part, I have to be able to record The View for my wife. With two kids — and a third on the way — she has to work in her viewing of The View. The EyeTV will accomplish that for me.

So some think this year’s Macworld keynote was lack-luster, that Apple disappointed with their announcements and that iWork 09 is nothing to get excited about.

Don’t count me in that group.

The releases in this keynote — save the announcement about updating the 17″ MacBook Pro — were aimed at everyday consumer users. And even power-users or professionals who live on their Macs, as I do, are also consumer users who love their iLife 09 offerings. (OK, at least like iTunes.)

Here’s a quick breakdown of what I like the most:

1. iWork upgrades. The new offerings for Numbers and Pages excite me the most, as I use them in my business work. Two key features — mail merge and table categories — have me excited.

2. iWork.com Yep. I said it. I know it’s no Google Docs, but I have my reasons. I’ll explain in my next post.

3. DRM-free music. Finally. This has been a long-time coming, and I’m glad that it is now here. Apple is also offering “an easy, one-touch” method of upgrading your existing music to DRM-free. Of course, it costs 30 cents per song, so I’ll be discriminatory in doing so.

4. iPhoto online sharing. I’ve been using a plug-in for flickr, so it’s nice to have native support now. And I like having Facebook uploading capability as well. Now people will stop harassing me about uploading photos.

5. iMovie travel maps. Now I can take my childhood dream of being Indiana Jones one step further with these cool new maps.

6. iMovie precision editing. This looks to be a nice step up from the current editor in iMovie. I use this a lot in campaigns for web videos, so I’m jazzed.

I’m expounding my thoughts in longer posts on iWork and iLife. They’ll be posted later.

You can also head on over to MacWorld and read their articles on iLife 09, iWork 09, DRM-free iTunes and the 17″ MacBook Pro.